Okay,
This process is a real bitch. If you plan accordingly and follows every rule no matter how dumb you shall succeed. Nothing will make sense and you will receive no answers to your questions so just roll with it.
FIRST!! Make your appointments. You cant do shit without making sure their is perhaps someone where your going that speaks english. When I say English I mean awesome people who will try their hardest to speak with you. First I called up the driving center in the city and made a paper work check appointment. This is where all your information is double checked. You need two pics of yourself passport style but they are 30X24mm size you can get these at those strange photo booths all over the road sides.(who the hell needs passport photos suddenly near the shoe stores??)Alien registration card, Certificate of completion of alien registration(you can get this at you city hall in like 3 minutes), License from your home country, and \2400 for the fee. All set..
SECOND!!
Plan a whole day for this and they are only open on weekdays. Go to a local JAF your first day and get your license translated. Costs a bit of money but you just hand over your license and alien card and 30ish minutes later you have a fancy envelope. Later that same day go to your paper work check at the driving center. They will take all above mentioned paperwork and then ask you lots of questions about what you did to get your license in your home country. I'm from America, so they got a little confused about the issue date of my license. It says 2009 because I turned 21 and had to get a new license so I could buy boose. The under 21 license is vertical, while the over 21 is horizontal. So they thought I got my license in 2009, when really I got it in 2004. I explained to them why it got changed and all was well. They super cool guy that spoke with me was amazed I got my permit when I was 15 and took my driving course during school as a class. This took a while maybe 2 hours, but everyone was amazingly friendly.
THIRD!!
Wait a minute are you from the fabled cursed countries?? I mean the ones that actually have to take the driving test. My friend who went with me was from Canada and didnt have to take the test. All she did you visit the same driving center on day 2 and took an eye test and got the license. I curse thee.... Well I'm from America so I have a more expensive process to get my license. Step two of this process is the driving test.
--Driving Test--
Okay this was difficult not gonna lie. I do NOT speak Japanese and I am limited in what I can say and understand. I had my boe(board of education) call up the driving center and find me an instructor. Some poor soul agreed to tutor me for four hours on a Saturday. First of all you can only practice on weekends(saturday) and sundays have limited hours. So you meet the instructor at the actual course you will drive on for the test. Remember you have to pay for this per hour. Each instructor has his or her own fees and then their is a fee for the actual course. I will talk about this at the end. So you show up mee the instructor and get ready to drive for 4 straight hours. In Miyazaki there are two courses you have to remember. Course 1 and 2. When you show up for the test they will announce randomly which is the test of the day. You only need to drive one and pass it to get your license. It's difficult, my instructor laughed at me and called my Bruce lee. He told me I drive too fast, turn the wheel too fast, turn too fast. Please notice the reacurring theme. TOO FAST..You will not go over 24ish Kilometers per hour. Around corners you better be prepared to go slower than putting your car into drive and putting it into drive. Just chant slow the whole time. Hug the white line, don't hit the white dots, triple break, I verbalized in english what I was doing like saying check, okay or counting. You didn't have too but I felt better if they could see and hear what I was doing. There are real working lights on the course and there will be at least 5 other people driving around. I got yelled at for taking my hand off the wheel, having my hand at ten and two(I guess you should have them a little higher than that) and underhand turning my steering wheel. You have to remember the whole course, commit it to memory, but on the day of my test the instructor told me where to go in Japanese. After 4 hours I was still sketchy so I went back for one more hour on Sunday which was the best thing I've ever done. This day and a half of practice was done about 2 days before I went to JAF and got the paperwork checked.
Finally after all the planning and checking it was time for the test day. I got there when it opened at 8:30Am. I went back to the small room for a final paper work run through, then I immediately had to take the eye test. It's a box with C's facing in different directions and you tell the test giver which direction the C is facing, left, right, up or down. If you don't know directions in Japanese just point and thats good enough. Then I had to take a written test. For foreigners it was very simple and in badly translated English but nothing you can't manage. There were ten questions. Like, you should always wear you seat belt while driving. TRUE Just make sure to study your street signs before taking this test. The test is a little strange, but you'll pass. Now you can go out to the course to walk it. They will have announced which is the course of the day(for me course 2) and you can walk for about an hour before they start the actual testing.I did some vision training then waited with everyone else (maybe 25 people) then the test started. All the foreigners that day had to go together. I took the automatic test, which is much different than the manual test. I was assigned a test giver and then just waited until my number car came up. He will then tell you what order your group goes in. Yes other people will be in the back seat while you are taking the test. Ignore them, mine was some crazy Japanese man that became an America citizen and wouldn't stop talking to me. I was nervous as hell no gonna lie, but thats better for me. Nerves = Paying extra attention to detail. I need pressue but other people panic and fail because they are so nervous. Walk around the back of the car, look left and right when you get to the door. Open said door, sit down, adjust seat, close door, put seat belt on, move mirrors, start car, look at test dude and start triple checking you views, and go. I went around the course and the test guy had a sheet of paper that when I made a mistake wrote somethin on the map where i made the mistake. I made two at the beginning. Not being close enough to the white line, Im not kidding when I say get close to it. Finish the test, glance at the test guy, all he said to me is Ok, which means YOU PASS!!! sweet jebus I was happy, I stumbled out of the car and started dancing in the waiting area, didn't care passed!! Then you move to a different building where more money and paper work and tada! you have a license.
The break down:
3 days
roughly $400 USD =\40000 Sucks but the Japanese students pay \300000
Don't forget 2400for test fee and 2100for license fee.
Day 1- Driving practice with instructor minimum 4 hours Saturday and Sunday
Day 2 - JAF in the morning, Driving center paperwork check in the afternoon(make an appointment for the driving center, you can just walk into JAF)
Day 3- Driving test in the morning This all took 4 hours
Yeah it sucked but now I can stay another year in Japan
